Webex Calling: Three Takeaways From Cisco Live US

Collaboration Quick Talks Series

The Collaboration Quick Talk  blog series highlights ‘What’s Next in the Story’ and why we’re excited about the future of  collaboration. The Quick Talk was filmed at the Webexperience Zone at Cisco Live U.S. in San Diego. In the Webexperience Zone Theater, Cisco executives and subject matter experts presented the best of collaboration insights and strategies for today’s solutions during short talks, presentations, and panels. The first Collaboration Quick Talk offers three Webex Calling take-aways from Cisco Live US.

Bringing Together The Power of Cloud Calling & The Webex Platform

As the global market leader in calling and collaboration, Cisco Webex Calling offers the scalability, reliability and security demanded by enterprises. With hundreds of PBX features, HD audio and video, cognitive interactions and rich interoperability, Webex Calling offers the flexibility to move your business to the cloud at your own pace, in one or multiple stages.

This is an exciting time for Cisco Collaboration. At Cisco Live US in June, I had the privilege and opportunity to share the updates on one of Cisco’s most exciting new solutions, Webex Calling.

Watch my Webex Calling Lightning Talk on the power of cloud calling and the Webex platform:

https://youtu.be/q66N0LlIspI

Here are the 3 Key Take-Aways

#1 Webex Calling is Globally Available and Fully Integrated with the Webex Platform

The general availability of Webex Calling, Cisco’s new cloud-native calling solution, was announced for the United States in March of this year. Since then we have expanded our global reach and are currently offering Webex Calling in 55 countries which includes service in the US, EMEA, Canada, Asia Pacific region and expanding.

By 2020, Webex Calling will be available in over 70 countries, making it the most globally-available enterprise-ready cloud calling solution on the market.

Built on the multitenant, carrier-grade calling architecture acquired in the 2018 BroadSoft acquisition and integrated within the Cisco Webex platform, Webex Calling provides industry-leading enterprise cloud calling capabilities. We offer Webex Calling as part of a the complete Webex collaboration suite that includes calling, messaging, meetings, team collaboration, and contact center, with integrated Cisco devices. Webex Calling delivers the feature-richness and mobile flexibility enterprises demand. Cisco’s scalable, reliable, redundant Webex platform is designed to serve the mobile workforce anywhere, with enterprise-level security that only Cisco can deliver.

#2 Webex Calling is a Proven, Cloud-Calling Solution for Mid-Market and Enterprise Businesses

The small business (SMB) segment has been the earliest adopter of cloud calling. While reduced IT spend and the new cost efficiencies of the cloud were the primary benefits SMB customers wanted, their small size offered the additional advantage of being able to move to the cloud all at once.

The midmarket and enterprise segments have, in the past, been slower to adopt cloud calling. Early cloud solutions did not meet their requirements for a higher level of feature-richness, security, reliability and integration with the other business-critical applications. However, corporate initiatives around digital transformation, IT cost reduction, and unified communications simplification, along with new cloud innovation have made midmarket and enterprise the fastest growing segments in today’s market.

Webex Calling is not an upstart, but is tailored to meet the needs of the midmarket and enterprise. Cisco acquired BroadSoft to address the growing demand for cloud calling and collaboration solutions from the midmarket and enterprise segments. As a result, Webex Calling is built with one of the industry’s most robust and proven cloud calling architectures and is sold by leading telecom service providers around the world.

Today, there are over 23 million business users on that architecture alone, which has been developed and evolved over the last 20 years. We’ve listened to our enterprise customers and partners about features: fixed mobile convergence, business continuity, single number identity, all the flexibilities that are needed for integration into provisioning systems and back-end systems, and we have built a cloud solution that caters to those needs specifically.

The resulting adoption of the platform by service providers and value-added resellers alike since the March 2019 US launch has been phenomenal, with 200+ approved partners and 100+ partners ready to take orders around the globe.

#3 Organizations Across Multiple Verticals Are Rapidly Adopting Webex Calling

Since the March 2019 US launch, Cisco has won several midmarket and enterprise Webex Calling deals across a variety of different verticals. Read Webex Calling-Strong Market Momentum

Retail/Hospitality – (2,500 users) a large US-based restaurant holding company managing six popular franchises is leveraging Webex Calling, collaboration, and devices to consolidate multiple infrastructures and applications into one unified, reliable, mobile solution. This customer anticipates $1.7 million in savings for telecom within the first year.

Managed Services/Financial – (over 20,000 users) A large global enterprise, driven by digital transformation and a mobile-first experience for their workforce, replaced their Avaya platform for calling, Skype for Instant messaging, and a variety of conferencing platforms, including BlueJeans, to one consolidated Webex platform, with Webex Calling and Webex Teams for their distributed workforce.

Managed Services – (120 users) an Australia-based events and venues organization has started phase 1 of their migration from a Cisco Collaboration Flex Plan on-premises contract to a cloud subscription, with plans to move all employees incrementally to Webex Calling and Cisco devices, for hassle-free, cloud-centric calling and collaboration

Healthcare – (5,000+ users) a leading Italian pharmaceutical company, is leveraging the flexibility, reliability, and fast deployment capabilities of Webex Calling to improve IT and internal workforce work/life balance, and to reduce overall costs.

Simplified buying via the Cisco Collaboration Flex Plan and aggressive pricing across the Cisco collaboration portfolio has helped our new midmarket and enterprise customers with their cost reduction missions upfront. Additional operational savings are also achieved, thanks to the significant reduction in management expenses and other ongoing savings that are inherent with cloud migration.

Why Choose Cisco Webex Calling?

Cisco is number one in the market for cloud and on-premises calling (Synergy Research, 2018). With 45% of the on-premises market share, 57% of the cloud market share, and more than 20 years of experience and innovation in the industry driving us forward, there’s never been a more exciting time for Cisco Collaboration.

Review one of the assets below to learn more about the power of cloud calling and the Webex platform.

Report: See why Aragon names Cisco a collaboration leader

EBook: The case for calling on the cloud

Matrix: See how Webex Calling stacks up against competitors

Interested in learning more?

Connect with all the Collaboration Quick Talk blogs in the series

See all the Quick Talks at CLUS19